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The money go-round.

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Anna Raccoon on May 11, 2009

Throw money at the problem, it’s Labour’s answer to everything.

This morning Sir Stuart Bell has come up with a spiffing wheeze to control the profligate spending of MPs. He’s going to set up a new unit which will ‘reassure the public that we do take fully into account their concerns’.

This audit body will be staffed by ‘skilled people’ from outside parliament. The new unit is expected to cost around £600,000 a year to run.

I have news for Sir Stuart.

The Government already has just such a unit.

It has skilled staff who specialise in overseeing the expenditure of other people’s money. It has a case management system designed to look after up to 50,000 individual cases a year, it won’t bat an eyelid at another 646.

It has an investigatory unit which will actually go and physically look at the bath before sanctioning a new bath plug – just to make sure that it is really needed.

It has sour faced civil servants who will put every possible obstacle in the way of releasing money. It cares less if your wife is going to divorce you if it doesn’t pay out before Christmas. It releases no money until it has receipts it is totally satisfied with. It goes through those receipts with a tooth comb.

It requires that those who are spending other people’s monies lodge a hefty deposit with it to indemnify it against possible fraud. It never fails to prosecute those who commit any fraud.

It is perfect, and perfectly fit for purpose.

It’s called the Public Guardianship Office, and it’s duty is to look after the finances of those who are vulnerable and who cannot supervise the expenditure of their money directly.

There is no other body of people more vulnerable than the tax payers at the moment.

They do this, politicians and civil servants. They come across a problem that they perceive as ‘new’ and spend millions on coming up with a solution without ever considering they already have one.

It’s a bit like people working in different departments in the same organisation: They need a form for something or other so they spend ages designing one and never think to ask other departments if such a form already exists.

You end up with a multitude of forms, systems etc. all aimed at achieving the same result, none of which have any sort of corporate identity and all of which cost individual fortunes to produce.

I’ve just witnessed the demise of Mr Speaker, who as usual made a meal (tax deductable at cheap HoC rates) of announcing the setting up of this noble body. I had heard it would be at an annual cost of £900,000 but at the moment this doesn’t matter. What is of more concern is who is setting this body up, what is it being asked to do and in what ways will it be different from the current system? It seems to me and others that this change is minute in the scale of things and has questions of eligibility for FOI requests about it.

Mr Speaker was not very forthcoming about any of it – as if it has anything to do with the electorate indeed – but he was very happy to address Ann Widdicombe as a man, and tear Kate Hoey, who I believe has used expenses the least of all MPs, to pieces for having the temmerity to suggest that the police investigation for the ‘mole’ be scrapped.

It’s funny that Martin’s anger was directed at the media and anyone who thought that he and the MPs were being somewhat out-of-order. He is a spiteful man with no grace and no saving grace. he, along with all of the other troughers, should resign now. He is not and has not been for some time, fit for purpose. How these people can continue to do their jobs as if they it meant anything to them is inconceivable.

Parliament should be dissolved. Arrests and investigations should commence. None of these people should be in governance ever again.

I was reading Nick Robinsons cringe inducing blog earlier, some 500 odd comments, and was struck by how ‘across the board’ was the anger. If you remember back to the ‘anti-Maggie’ anger, it was just from one section of the populace. This has united people in a way that I have never seen before. (Note to Jane, I was not alive during WWll)

Don’t know about the Guardianship Office (anything to do with GMG?) – what about the “PutEmOnAShip” and let ‘em sail off the the North Pole, where they can spend time counting Polar Bears/Penguins (delete as appropriate) for the rest of their days?

Still this scandal has at least given us , the voters, a good guide when it comes to a much needed cross party parliamentary culling…….is any one going to vote for the ‘proven’ greedy ones? —–and the beauty is they’ve done it to themselves……. GO Green.

Micheal Martin, that man makes my toes curl, he has been fighting tooth and nail to keep these expenses secret. When are we going to get the chance to read about his expense caims, he is truely rotten to the core.

Hear! Hear! Miss Mink ………… There is something about the lascivious way he licks his lips that makes me judge him to be a most unsavoury character. ………. So I would not be surprised if he has been putting all manner of things through on his expenses.

Yes and the way his jowls wobble, as he laughs at how they’ve wasted our funds on the’re fripperies . . . his expenses are documented, but they don’t look worth spending hundreds of thousands of more of our money to try and keep them secert ? Has someone missed something ? Also whats his obsession with negative press, his spends a lot on that as well, was Mrs Boothroyd this protective of her fellow MP’s ?